NCAA looking to crack down on ‘pay-for-play’ NIL deals | College Football Enquirer
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss the NCAA enforcement of NIL rules amidst the extremely fast change in the recruiting landscape since the allowance of NIL payments.
Video Transcript
DAN WETZEL: Pat, you reported some of this, the Athletic, a lot of people did. There is a NIL crackdown coming, supposedly. Some conglomeration of college sports leaders are going to ask the NCAA to, actually, enforce their rules which barred collectives or boosters from being involved in their recruitment process. Many of these people writing collectives do not seem too concerned about it. What can you tell us, Pat? What's the latest?
PAT FORDE: Yeah, I mean, as the panic escalates, that's the next thing is, of course, again, you know, we have to, first of all, beseech Congress. We had people go meet with legislators late last week to do that. And then now, the latest, yes, we are now asking enforcement, go do your civic duty, man, go out and enforce the rules that as they were intended and have completely not been listened to or applied at all which was-- These are not supposed to be recruiting inducements. These are not supposed to be pay for play. This is not supposed to be, you know, if you sign with us, you'll get X amount of money, before you've done anything.
I talked to someone who works in the NCAA compliance space, not necessarily someone who works at the NCAA, but people who work in compliance. And they said, what the NCAA can do and could do is compel players who have gotten big deals like, say, Nijel Pack who's getting $800,000 to go to Miami to play basketball. Just sit down and say, tell us how the hell all this went down, like to see your phone records and this and that, you know. We would like to know exactly what all was involved in this. So I can see where the NCAA is going with this. I just don't know again, whether it will lead to any actual enforceable sanctions.
DAN WETZEL: And look, this could be stopped. All I'm saying is this could be stopped. Like, this-- it's reminds me of the NFL stands around, and they come up with rule after rule to make people interview African-American coaches and try to hire. And it's like, there's 32 of you. Like, why don't you just start doing it?
PAT FORDE: Right.
DAN WETZEL: There's only a few of you. So it's like if you stop-- if you really want to crack down, you have to count on with people actually cracking down. But this being college sports and part of the reason why I love college sports is some of these schools are like, yeah, we're, I mean, this is totally out of control, this is completely out of control, so we're going to be the most out of control. And I mean, I love that. I'm not criticizing it. I'm just saying some of this stuff is really funny.
PAT FORDE: Oh, yeah, yeah.
DAN WETZEL: 'Cause all it has to happen is you go-- a couple of these schools go, we will not-- if we find out you talk to one of our guys, we're not going to recruit that guy anymore. Now, OK, so now, you'd have, like, the, like, sneak into the Alabama one and start, yeah, you'd be in Tennessee. Like, you could [INAUDIBLE] But if everyone just self-policed we'd be all right, but nobody will self-police and no one will trust each other. So now, they want to throw it on this enforcement staff to police it.
I don't, I mean, look, you-- I will not speak for you. I don't think this is the end of the world. I think just let this thing play out. It'll be all right. But if you want to stop it, I can't criticize the NCAA for trying to enforce the rules that they have.
PAT FORDE: No. No.
DAN WETZEL: So good luck.
PAT FORDE: Yeah, I mean, again, if they had been forward-thinking enough to see maybe how this could go and to really have come up with a good structure and framework and a clear message of, we will come after you if you do X,Y, and Z, then this might have not gotten quite to the point that it has. It might still have-- I'm sure, it still would have-- the horse would have been out of the barn, but the horse is so far out of the barn now that It's in the next County. And so now, putting it back in is the hard part, because the NCAA, as usual, reacting instead of acting, not seeing the situation for everything it was going to be, and being too slow. And so now, they're, once again, in catch up mode.
